VMware published a very interesting yet brief 12-pages whitepaper about how to handle a migration from ESX Server 2.x to the new VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3):
…there are four stages in a typical upgrade project.
- VirtualCenter components, including VirtualCenter Server, its database, and all associated clients
- ESX Server hosts and all their related VMware VMFS datastores,whether local or shared
- Virtual machines, particularly the virtual disk files and virtual hardware
- VMware Tools
Because of the tight coupling between ESX Server 3.0 and VMware VMFS You must plan the upgrade process carefully to ensure there are no unrecoverable losses.
Many of processes invoked during an upgrade are irreversible, meaning that once they have been performed, you cannot roll back to the previous state. However, the methodology based on the four stages outlined at the beginning of this section was designed so that, at every stage, you can perform an appropriate backup…
Read the whole whitepaper at source.
Thanks to About Virtualization for the news.